Servants of the Empire: The Secret Academy by Jason Fry

Author:Jason Fry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Publishing Worldwide

When Tepha Leonis finally let go of Merei, her eyes were red and streaming—and Merei knew she didn’t look much better herself. But she’d thought Tepha needed to know what she’d discovered in the Imperial records: that Zare, who’d left earlier that day for Arkanis, had been transferred there as part of the same secret program that had ensnared his sister, Dhara, and because the Empire suspected there was a connection between him and the recent insurgent activity on Lothal.

Merei promised Tepha that she’d let her know anything she heard, then sped away on her jumpspeeder. But something else was bothering her besides Zare’s departure.

One of Merei’s jobs for the ambitious young criminal Yahenna Laxo had been to keep tabs on the fugitives, dissidents, and other unfortunates paying Laxo to hide them in bolt-holes across Capital City.

Laxo was now dead, killed by stormtroopers in a confrontation Merei had engineered in a desperate effort to free herself from his clutches—a confrontation that had ended with the troopers’ opening fire instead of arresting her boss as she’d expected.

Before he’d died, Laxo had ordered her to take a bounty hunter to the hideout used by Holshef, an elderly poet branded a dissident by the Empire. Fortunately, Merei hadn’t needed to keep that appointment. But what had happened to Holshef?

She pulled her jumpspeeder over to the side of the road, earning a horn blast from a droid speeder truck.

“Wox ho uffdon comda,” the truck squalled at her.

“To you too,” she said, adding a casually rude gesture.

Merei knew she’d been extremely lucky to escape Laxo’s clutches and her own mother’s investigation into the data breach Merei had caused at the Transportation Ministry. Either could have landed her in prison. To put herself in further danger felt like wasting her second chance, and she knew it was madness to think she’d get a third.

But could she really leave Holshef to be turned out of his hiding place? The thought of the gentle old poet in Imperial custody made her sick.

Merei sighed and gunned her jumpspeeder, earning herself another reprimand from a different droid truck. She headed for the south side of Capital City and its industrial quarter. The address where Merei hoped Holshef was still hiding—1044 Chapel—looked like half a dozen of the neighboring buildings on its block. It was a low-slung warehouse built of adobe and expanded with synthetic stone.

Merei slowed her jumpspeeder and circled the block, ready to race off if she spotted someone getting out of a parked vehicle, a drone in the sky, or some other sign that she was being watched. But there was nothing. She parked her bike, tried to wipe the dust from her face, and thumbed the warehouse’s buzzer.

A male voice grumbled something in a language she didn’t know, then stopped and started over.

“You’re the Syndicate’s kid courier,” he said.

That was reassuring on one hand but alarming on the other. Merei licked her lips, reminding herself that as Laxo’s agent she hadn’t been in the habit of taking poodoo from anybody—even if that somebody was bigger and meaner and carrying a blaster.

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